Thomson, Hugh 1960?-

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THOMSON, Hugh 1960?-

PERSONAL:

Male. Born c. 1960, in England. Education: Bristol University Film School.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Bristol, England. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 91 Clapham High St., London SW4 9TA, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, expedition leader, and documentary filmmaker and producer. Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, co-founder. Films include Pacific Hell, Out of India, Great Journeys: Mexico, Dancing in the Street: A Rock and Roll History and Indian Journeys, 2001.

MEMBER:

Royal Geographical Society (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

British Academy of Film and Television Arts award nomination, and other awards, all for Dancing in the Street; Grierson Prize for best documentary, 2001, for Indian Journeys.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Essentially Eton (lectures), Richard Copisarow (Uxbridge, England), 1978.

(Photographer and author of introduction) Hiram Bingham, Lost City of the Incas: The Story of Machu Picchu and Its Builders, Sterling Publishers (New York, NY), 2002.

The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, Weidenfeld & Nicholson (London, England), 2001, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Imagine: The Nanda Devi Sanctuary, Weidenfeld & Nicholson (London, England), forthcoming.

SIDELIGHTS:

Called an "impressive adventurer and an equally skilled writer" by Library Journal contributor Lee Arnold, Hugh Thomson is an author and filmmaker who has devoted much of his time to exploring the Peruvian Andes. As an outgrowth of his fascination with this mountainous region of South America, British-born Thomson went on several expeditions into the area surrounding the ancient city of Machu Picchu, and in the process discovered the sites of Llactapata and Cota Coca. He has also written a book about the Amazon region titled The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, and has provided photographs for a reissue of American explorer Hiram Bingham's classic text Lost City of the Incas: The Story of Machu Picchu and Its Builders that was published in 2002. Describing budding-explorer Thomson as "young, British, and with no idea what he wanted to do with his life" until he discovered his life's calling, Christian Science Monitor reviewer Diana Muir praised the author for sharing his experiences "locat[ing] ruined cities by traversing roadless mountains in landslide country" and "pushing through tropical forests so lush that a hiker can pass within a few feet of a large stone building without seeing it." Reviewing The White Rock in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer praised the author's storytelling skills and added that, "erudite and charming,.… Thomson's wit, eye for detail and reverence for humanity set him apart from the average travel-adventure writer."

The history of the Incan empire prior to its destruction by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s is chronicled in The White Rock, the history of the region interwoven with memories of Thomson's first excursion into the region in 1982 and stories of other men who set out to recover pieces of that ancient culture. He includes Machu Picchu discoverer Bingham as well as lesser-known explorers such as Robert Nichols and Gene Savoy, and also brings information gathered from archeological and anthropological experts to paint a vivid picture of the Incan empire known as Tahuantinsuyo. Impressed by Thomson's "insightful glimpses into ways of organizing a great empire utterly unfamiliar to Western thought" and his "wryly self-deprecating humor," Muir noted in her Christian Science Monitor review that The White Rock's true gift comes with "the realization that a people as ancient and primitive as the Incas could so exactly share our sense of the beautiful."

In recent years, Thomson has turned his attention to India, and a 2000 trip to the sanctuary of Nanda Devi—located in the Himalayas at an elevation of 25,000 feet and inaccessible to humans until the 1934 expedition by Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman—resulted in the book Imagine: The Nanda Devi Sanctuary. Among Thomson's many films is the award-winning ten-hour public television documentary Dancing in the Street: A Rock and Roll History, which profiles the history of rock music beginning in the 1950s.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2002, George Cohen, review of The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, p. 566.

Christian Science Monitor, January 2, 2003, Diana Muir, "A Palace at the Top of the World."

Geographical, October, 2001, "A Peruvian Passion" (interview), p. 98; January, 2002, Jim Blackburn, review of The White Rock, p. 70.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2002, review of The White Rock, p. 1517.

Library Journal, December, 2002, Lee Arnold, review of The White Rock, p. 161.

National Geographic Adventure, February, 2003, Anthony Brandt, "Twenty Years on the Inca Trail: A British Bartender Discovered a Lost City in the Jungle and Became Obsessed with a Culture and Its Past," p. 34.

Publishers Weekly, November 25, 2002, review of The White Rock, p. 51.

Spectator, September 29, 2001, Justin Marozzi, review of The White Rock, p. 38.